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One killed as plane strikes San Diego shopping center

A small airplane crashed into the parking lot of a busy San Diego shopping center, media reports say. CBS8.com, citing the Federal Aviation Administration, said the plane was attempting to land at Montgomery

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One killed as plane strikes San Diego shopping center

One woman was killed and another injured Wednesday when their single-engine plane crashed into the parking lot of a busy San Diego shopping center. Witnesses say the plane hit Target, and landed in the Costco parking lot.

William M. Welch, USA TODAY
8:36 a.m. EDT July 31, 2014

San Diego police examine the wreckage of a small plane in the parking lot of shopping center Wednesday, in San Diego.(Photo: David Brooks, AP)

One woman was killed and another injured Wednesday when their single-engine plane crashed into the parking lot of a busy San Diego shopping center near a city airport.

The Mooney M-20L went down around 5:30 p.m. near Montgomery Field. It came to rest in a parking lot of a Costco store and a Target store in the Kearny Mesa section of the city.

Lee Swanson, spokesman for the San Diego Fire Department, said the woman who died was a passenger in the airplane. The pilot, also a woman, was transported to an area hospital. Her condition was not known, he said.

Police Lt. Steve Behrendt says the plane clipped the top of the Target store and knocked down a light pole before coming to rest on the paved parking lot.

Ian Gregor, spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration, said the plane "bounced while landing at Montgomery Field around 5:25 p.m., continued westbound and crashed in a Costco parking lot.''

UTSanDiego.com, the website of the newspaper formerly known as the Union-Tribune, quoted a helicopter pilot who was flying in the area saying that he heard the plane's pilot tell the tower she had lost power and the plane was going down.

The plane caught fire, and Behrendt said the dead woman suffered serious burns.

Swanson said two people on the ground came to the aid of the plane's occupants and suffered minor burns and other injuries. One was transported to a hospital.

The shopping center is in the Kearny Mesa section of San Diego, across California State Route 163 from Montgomery Field, a general aviation airport operated by the city of San Diego.

The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board are investigating.